


Unseen by Death

by Skeren



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Duo being Death, M/M, Then having to make up for it after the fact, and not realizing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5758810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between Milliardo bringing Libra down to Earth and Mariemaea's rise, there was a span of time when most assumed that Zechs was dead.</p><p>The question was... why wasn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Written June of 2004.

The blonde lay in the wreckage of what had once been Epyon and waited to die. Death refused to take him. In fact, had he known, he would have cried, because death did not _know_ him at all. Not the living death, and the other minions served to avoid him because the living one didn’t know he had to direct them _to_ this one. So he waited. He waited for hours upon hours, awake and in pain, but still, he did not die, did not cease to be… whoever he really was. Some called him Milliardo Peacecraft, while others called him Zechs Merquise. But who was he? It was about that point that he realized something with crystal clarity. Whoever he was, he hadn’t ever rolled over and died before, so it was pointless to start now. Every nerve in his body burned with fire, and it was all that he could do to crawl out from under the metal that had been crushing him before he fell unconscious, oddly reassured in the knowledge that he still had to live, even if it was painful.

*****

Duo rolled over in bed once again, that nagging sensation that he was forgetting something poking and prodding at him. What could it possibly be? He should be entirely exhausted right now, shouldn’t he? There had just been a huge battle, Libra had been destroyed, what more was there to do besides rest? Duo turned over again, trying to push away the nagging feeling that refused to go away. He was forgetting something. Shaking his head once more in firm determination, Duo silenced the little voice. Whatever it was could wait. 

It didn’t want to wait. “Damn it! Okay, I get it, I’m not done yet, now what the hell is it that I’m forgetting?” Duo waited, and waited even more, his mind raking for anything that could possibly aspire to keep him awake at that moment. Nothing. The little niggling voice had suddenly shut up. And now, he was wide-awake. “What’d I ever do to deserve this?” It was a petulant whine as Duo sat up, sighing. He’d gone with Hilde back to the scrapyard, but damned if he’d actually do any sleeping now. 

Getting out of bed, Duo padded barefoot into the kitchen, his loose, black, long sleeved pajamas hiding the array of scars that he bore like a crest. He blinked a few times as one of the little gadgets he’d given to Hilde spun in place, the electric creature shape-changing into something closely resembling an imp. Duo froze in place accordingly as the little black metal creature spoke. “Master, we’ve been waiting a long time for you.”

Duo continued to stare at the little thing that was sitting on the counter, and leaned back against the wall behind him heavily. “Okay, that’s it, I have to sleep, I’m starting to lose my mind.” With that, Duo retreated back to Hilde’s guestroom, locking the door behind him before hiding under the covers. He didn’t dare go to sleep once he heard the high pitch giggles that had chased him into the room.


	2. Walking backwards

Duo watched the sun inch into his window, eyes bloodshot from his determined lack of blinking. The giggling had stopped. Rolling over in bed, the braided teen slowly got up, inching to his door and pushing it open. Nothing was out there. He didn’t think to look at the door, the scratching noises he’d heard going uninvestigated. He was afraid he’d see nothing there. He would have been stunned to see the deep gouges on the bottom of the metal door instead.

Moving quickly, Duo tossed open Hilde’s bedroom door, heedless of any modesty that the girl might have been trying to hang onto. He ducked forward, giving her a couple good shakes to make sure she was awake. “I’m leaving.” Without saying anything more, he headed back to his room.

There was a mad scramble that left Hilde in too big pants and a fluffy t-shirt, trailing Duo back to his room with a look of abject confusion on her face. “I thought you were going to stay a while Duo, why are you leaving?”

“Can’t stay here Hil, that’s why. I think I’m going nutters and I don’t want you to be in the way of anything I may get it into my head to do.” Duo quickly got together the few things he’d unpacked the night before. He’d rather looked forward to sticking around a while, but that wasn’t about to happen now!

“Duo!” Hilde moved forward, effectively barring the doorway. “What are you talking about? You’re just fine! You were fine last night, and you’re fine now. Could you tell me what’s wrong?”

Duo came to a standstill, nose to nose with the dark haired girl. “I told you, I’m going nutters. There’s no other explanation. I don’t want to leave, really! I was looking forward to being here, but it’s either me, or you have some really creepy gizmos that I want no part of!” Duo remembered the eerie giggling that had persisted until the sun came up with a shudder. It was even worse than hearing Heero’s laughter while the boy was fighting, and that’s saying something!

Hilde stared at Duo in utter bewilderment, reaching forward to put her hands on his shoulders and ignoring his twitch. “Duo. Look at me. There are no freaky gizmos here that you didn’t make. The only things here are normal gizmos. You are not going crazy. You are tired. You think you saw something that wasn’t there. Okay? Just calm down.”

Duo stared back at Hilde. He couldn’t believe she just blatantly told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Was she trying to make him feel better? If she was, she was failing miserably. “Hilde, let go. I’m leaving. I’ll come back to visit you. Just, let me leave now.”

Hilde finally released him, noticing that he was becoming more and more tense the longer she persisted in touching him. She’d never understood how someone as touchy as him could react so badly to being touched back. “Okay, if you promise to visit me. And you have to vid me and tell me you’re alright.”

Duo gave Hilde a small, wan smile. “Of course. Promise.” Duo then made for the front door, quickly yanking on his boots before slamming out of the door and leaving Hilde’s scrap yard. 

Hilde just watched him go with a slightly pained expression. “Damn it. I didn’t make you promise when.” She had a sinking feeling that she wouldn’t be seeing the braided teen again for a very, very long while.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Zechs groaned in agony as the pain that seared him from head to foot broke through the barrier of being unconscious that he had been hanging onto so tenaciously.

“I think he’s waking up!” A few people with a loud range of muttered agreements echoed the feminine outcry. Zechs merely wished they would all shut up and leave him alone so he could be in pain in peace. Didn’t they realize he’d just been through a major explosion here? Of course, he didn’t really register the thought.

“Go way.” It came out thick and pained, and he feebly waved a hand at the gawkers that he cracked an eye open to see. What was he, a showcase now? “Away.” He repeated the order a little firmer, though it remained little more than a pained whisper. When he realized that he was being ignored, Zechs forced himself to look around, seeing faces that were part of White Fang at some point, or had been, possibly were, clearly from the Sweeper fleet. Frowning in confusion over why he was on display, he tried a different tact. “What’s going on?”

“You’re alive!” Apparently one of the people nearby had believed that was self-explanatory, they were wrong.

“And?” It was said in a pained voice, as Zechs forced his mind to work out what the hell they were all making such a big deal of. He nearly blew up the Earth, Libra was destroyed, and thereafter he was partially crushed under his suit on an asteroid… He ground to a halt at that point. “How am I still alive?”

There was a flurry of movement as the crowd parted, and Zechs found himself nose to nose with a gray-eyed man who had been a Sweeper on Howard’s ship when he had been there a few weeks before. “That’s really what we all want to know at the moment.”

Zechs moved his hands, ever so slowly, to his face, and was relieved when he didn’t need to move them anymore. He felt like he’d been blown up, then stomped on by a Gundam. Oh wait, he had! Now why was he still breathing…? “Did I crash to Earth?” It was the only sensible answer, as it couldn’t have been a meteor after all, he would have suffocated. 

“No. You were in space. We had to bind your ribs and put balms on your burns. But you weren’t breathing.” He seemed a little amazed by this as he spoke to Zechs, pulling back from the battered blonde. “And you still aren’t.”

Zechs’ eyes flew wide open and he looked at the crowd around him, trying to understand. “What?” A hand from one of the crowd pressed on his chest, and Zechs was jarred _into_ breathing. They were right, he hadn’t been breathing… And it hurt to restart the process. “What happened to me?” It was a weak phrase, rife with confusion and said in just a low whisper. He had to be alive for some reason, right?


	3. Chapter 3

Zechs had managed to move after a couple days. If what had just happened to him hadn't killed him, then he didn't know what could. In fact, he was shocked beyond all knowledge at the speed of his healing. It felt like he'd been weeks in recovery instead of merely days in pain. This led to the current situation. He was meeting with the captain of this ship, a pale man with graying hair, light brown eyes, and pale skin. He looked like he'd never seen a day of sunlight in his life.

Those light brown eyes had been following him around as he got to the point where he could move without feeling the urge to scream, and now, they clearly were determined to get some form of conversation out of him. Or rather, the owner of the eyes was. The captain lounged back in his chair with a small, secretive smile as he looked across the desk to where Zechs was seated. "Merquise."

Zechs smiled, and it wasn't without humor, though the humor it held was dark. "That would be me, though would you mind too terribly if I asked for the name of the person I'm addressing?"

"I would, so you can just call me Gray. Now that the preliminaries are handled, I'd like to ask you a question that has been on all of our minds. What are you?" Gray leaned forward rather abruptly, elbows resting on the secured wooden desk that he'd insisted on for his office, no matter how impractical for space. 

Zechs hadn't been expecting that question, not really, and he blinked owlishly by way of reply for a few seconds. "What exactly do you mean with that question?"

"What the bloody hell do you think I mean? I mean, what the _fuck_ are you? You sure and the hell can't be human after what we saw. You didn't freeze in the space vacuum, you didn't _breathe_ nor need to once we got you here! You still had a heartbeat through all that. So I'm asking you, and I sincerely hope you give me the correct answer, because I'm not sure I can handle any more freaky things out of you."

Zechs was speechless for a few moments before he regained his composure. "Well, would you like an honest answer?"

Gray immediately nodded, eyes narrowing slightly as he waited for an answer. When Zechs didn't speak, he did instead. "Yes, I would like an honest answer."

Zechs nodded a little before he leaned back in his chair with a slow, cautious action. "I have no idea." Gray's reaction almost made him smile, he looked so stunned. The reprieve was short-lived, unfortunately.

"Are you playing some kind of joke? I'll tell you now I'm not about to find it funny." Gray leaned back a fraction, running his icy eyes over the blond in front of him with a frown.

"No joke, I just really don't know. I thought I was human until now, but I don't know if that was ever true." Zechs shook his head with a faint sigh. 

"I'm sure you'll find out, and when you do, you'll tell me." Gray looked to Zechs, making sure he didn't have any disagreement before nodding to himself. "You can go ahead and go now. I'm not sure I want to ask you any more questions for a while." 

Zechs gave him a knowing smile and nodded, rising to his feet. "Of course Gray, I would see you at some other time to your convenience then."

"I'm sure you will." Gray watched Zechs move out of his office, staring after the regal figure for a long moment before shaking his head and putting his chin in his hand. "It's too early in the peace to have to mess with these riddles. Why did I have to be the one whose crew found the man?" Of course, the walls of his office had no answer to give.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Duo bit his lip and stared at his palm where he'd been cut by his latest work. It hadn't taken him long after he'd left Hilde in her home to find another place, and this place came with its own personal junkyard. He'd been out there ever since, and he spent every night after dark locked in the room he'd chosen for his bedroom, trying to get used to the taunting little creatures that peered in his window and scratched at his door. It was wholly useless. He thought it had been because of where he was, that Hilde's place somehow was haunted.

Oh how wrong he'd been. Now... Now he was staring with morbid fascination at the creation under his hands as the drops of blood that came from the cut in his palm soaked into the steel. They didn't roll away, or spread out, they vanished into the rapidly darkening metal. It was almost a bright fresh blood red now. Duo could have cursed himself for the stray thoughts, but he figured it would be pointless anyway. 

Duo remained in place, the sun beating down on his shoulders, as the figure under his hands... moved. That action seemed to have snapped Duo out of his trance, and he skittered back as the red resolved itself into an odd set of shirt and pants, and the curled ball of mechanics softened out into something else, only the items now obviously cloth visible.

"The hell?" Duo muttered the curse softly, relaxing a little as the curled thing didn't immediately lunge at him showing some sort of hell beast. He didn't know what was going on, but resolved that from that point on, there'd be no jumping at shadows. It had been nearly a week since this whole thing started after all, and he wasn't dead yet.

Duo, too wrapped up in his thoughts, didn't notice that the small figure unfurled, red down wings being revealed as the little male figure, who would have been barely three foot if he was standing, shoved himself to a cross-legged position. "Nah, not really." The tiny male propped his chin on his knee, peered up at Duo as the crouched figure jerked his attention back to him with a visible jolt. "But it'd be good to know when you got so big."

There was a moment of stunned silence before Duo leaned forward, picking up the long haired little blond in his hands and staring at him, mouth agape as he took in the familiar, teenage features of an old friend. An old, very dead friend who used to be much bigger than this. "You!" Duo gave the little man a shake, ignoring the annoyed look that got him. "You are _dead_!"

"I bin knowin that for a while now Kid. And can you stop shaking me? My head's startin to hurt." Immediately the little figure in red was dropped, where he fell back on his ass, staring up at Duo who was now standing back, both staring and glaring at him. "Ya never could make anything easy for me could ya? Could you calm down? It wasn' my fault I died! I'm back now an will be for a bit yet."

Duo took a few deep breaths, trying not to freak out at the small, very disgruntled person who looked like his child savior. It wasn't him, it couldn't be. "You are not Solo."

Solo gave Duo a sour look, getting to his feet and ruffling his wings with indignation before looking to the appendages in shock, his gaze then traveling over his clothes. "What the fuck am I wearin? An the feathers? Where'd those come from?"

"You kinda appeared like that after I cut myself." Duo moved closer, picking up his mentor again, ignoring the look it got him. "You hardly weigh anything."

Solo kicked his feet a little, then gave up after Duo kept him suspended further away as a precaution. "Could ya stop that? 'M not four. An, an' I'm dressed like a minion! Why would I be a minion?" 

"You're the one that knew you were dead." Duo set Solo on his feet, nicely, and watched him fling his wings around a bit.

"But! There'd have to be some god around here for me to be a _minion_ of all things. An it'd have to be someone I knew..." Solo trailed off, giving Duo a wide-eyed look. "What've you been _into_ kid?" 

Duo grinned, unable to resist baiting his old friend, somehow soothed he wasn't angry for failing him in this strange reunion. "Just saving the word and calling myself the God of Death Sol, no biggie."

Solo shook his head, looking around the junkyard they were in. "No biggie my ass."


	4. Chapter 4

Duo moved around his kitchen, putting various items together into something that was supposed to be edible. After their initial greeting, he’d led Solo inside. He’d been giving the small minion a rundown of his life for the last hour. “And that, Sol, is how I became Duo Maxwell.”

Solo held out a hand for a sandwich, giving Duo puppy eyes until the food was given up. “So thas how ya got ta bein Duo Maxwell.” He took a bite, slowly chewing as he stared at the braided god with an almost awed look on his face. “I didn’ do nothin deserving a bein named after! Those nice church folks did way better’n I ever did for ya!”

Duo smiled to himself and shook his head, putting together another sandwich before he came to sit at the table. “I wouldn’t have lived this long if it wasn’t for you Sol. The things you taught me are what got me this far in the first place.”

The minion finished off the food in his hand quickly before studying Duo closely, his golden eyes as shrewd as they’d always been. “I never wanted ya to do half the things ya musta to be the God of Death fer reals.”

Said god chuckled softly over the emphasis Solo put into the title and smiled at him. “It’s really Shinigami that I go by, but God of Death is what it means. I didn’t think you’d know that though, you never were interested in learning other languages.”

“No use learnin somethin I couldn’ use if I wasn’t ever gonna go where they spoke it all the time.” The blond shook his head, giving Duo a playful scowl. “Ya trying to distract me? I’m not gonna letcha. You used what I taught ya in a way tha I didn’t mean for ya to kid.” 

Chewing on his last bit of lunch, cobalt eyes met gold ones. “But we both know it was better that way.”

After a brief hesitation, the winged figure nodded. “Yeah. It was.” 

Duo nodded in turn and he moved to collect some of his things. “Hey Sol?”

There was a rustle as Solo got off his chair, moving after Duo as he went towards the other room. “Yeah kid?”

He held onto his silence a moment longer than needed before he looked sideways at his short companion. “Could you stay with me in my room? I’m not sure about the other things that came with god-hood here.”

There was a flash of white as the minion grinned. “Sure kid, ya know I won’t let the bad things getcha.”

“Yeah, I know.”

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Zechs ended up with a completely separate set of things to deal with. After leaving Gray’s office, he was immediately attacked with many curious stares and questions. They’d clearly waited for the captain to get the first pick on him before starting in on their own. At least none of the questions centered around his state of life.


	5. End notes and final scene piece

I clearly didn't get where I wanted to go in this story, as the plan was to have the voyage through these two meeting each other and getting together. But, I will say that I'm still pleased with the concept, even if I can't see myself ever finishing this story as it stands. I hope that this inspired someone! 

Who knows, I might revisit this concept someday with a fresh story once i have all my fic sorted out.

Onto the final written scene, tis short:

As far as greetings went, he knew this wasn’t going to be exactly reassuring. Just a little ‘Hey Hilde, what do you know? I wasn’t insane after all! I was just gaining my godly powers over life and death. Just like I always wanted!’

Or, maybe, he could take a more tactful approach. Either way, now that he had... a clue, if not something that he could really believe, then he needed to stop, calm down, and try to reassure his friend that she didn’t need to be worrying herself to the bone over what he might have taken off to do to himself.


End file.
